City officials are threatening to shut down Iceland, Berkeley’s World War II-era ice skating rink, if the rink’s management doesn’t act fast to address dozens of code violations. -more-

Was 2004 the East Bay’s Year of the Casino? -more-

Followers of Berkeley news over the past year might rightly conclude that town suffers from an edifice complex. -more-

New Year’s Eve, the biggest party night of the year, and UC Berkeley Junior Adam Weiss knows where he’ll be hours before the clock strikes midnight. -more-

I know where old sportswriters go when they die. They become the creative muses of publicity writers for college football teams. -more-

News of the earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Asia has shocked and scared those of us who live with the knowledge that it could happen here. When 3,000 Americans died suddenly in the World Trade Center, it seemed like an unimaginable number of deaths, but in Southeast Asia 23,000 deaths had been counted by Monday morning, with more to come as information continues to trickle in from remoter regions. For many Berkeley residents who have come here as students and stayed to become citizens, the fate of friends and family members back home caused immediate anxiety. Others of us have made friends through our travels to these countries and are worried about them now. Former Berkeleyans have settled in the affected countries, too—a good friend now lives in Bangkok, but often goes to beach resorts for vacations, and we haven’t heard from him yet. We heard from another friend who was on an island off the coast of Thailand that she was safe because she was on the landward side of the island, and we didn’t even know she’d gone there for a vacation until she e-mailed that she was all right. -more-